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Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

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Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#941

Post by simplotek »

cutenewt wrote: post #289
thinkingemote wrote: post #248

They need to re-free up the API. Early adopters and hackers really did some great work using the API until they walled-gardened it and rate limited it to make it unusable. They need to do this for goodwill at the very least, but I think it will spark the fire to make it popular with techies again. Based on the recently published discovery chats we will probably see: * High def video * Focus on music publication * The…

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

> He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API.

How relevant is the API though?

Is it possible to put together a Selenium script that posts a tweet?

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#942

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

andirk wrote: post #704
yurikoif wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying it is some country’s WeChat is like a curse… as WeChat is notorious for its closed mindedness and probably hated by most of its users… and they won’t even have any other option because Tencent is actively striking down all potential competitors…

Yeah wtf would anyone touting freedom of speech bring up China in any way? Tencent, owner of WeChat, said they'd block NBA Houston Rockets games because one of the Rockets' managers tweeted "Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong." [0]. Granted, I got kicked off of twitter for "misinformation" for saying "some day we'll all die". [0] https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/767805936/houston-rockets-gm-...

It's difficult to make a judgement on "some day we'll all die" without context. It might've been part of an insightful discussion about the potential of immortality or it could have been directed at the parent of a school-shooting victim.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#944

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

illuminati1911 wrote: post #726
yurikoif wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying it is some country’s WeChat is like a curse… as WeChat is notorious for its closed mindedness and probably hated by most of its users… and they won’t even have any other option because Tencent is actively striking down all potential competitors…

This. As someone living in China and having used wechat for years I've always found it ultra cringey when American businessmen/influencers are like "omg have you guys seen what Chinese are doing with wechat! They have this all in one app where..." First of all this idea of a superapp is nothing new. In fact iOS or Android is also a "superapp". Basically a software that has an ecosystem inside of it. Wechat has just c…

> If your friend posts a photo and his friend (who you don't know) makes a comment on it, you cannot see this comment but you can see your friends replies to him/her.

Is that a technical shortcoming or business logic? It doesn't sound entirely different from how Twitter handles private/blocked accounts.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#945

Post by mschuster91 »

_fat_santa wrote: post #312
cutenewt wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's going to be more in the other direction. He really hates the bots, so he'll probably close up the API. Until bots gets solved, no developer should expect the API to open up.

The problem isn't the bots, the problem is the lack of differentiation between bots and real accounts. I say open up the API and let people make whatever bots they wish, but if you tweet through the API then you get a big "BOT" tag next to your username on the feed.

That already exists (see e.g. that celebrity jet tracker) but I've never found out how to get that label.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#946

Post by loceng »

roughly wrote: post #831

Firing Vijaya is a hell of a move here. Parag had been in the CEO seat for less than a year and had no real experience, and Twitter's not such a unique company financially that the CFO is anything special, but Vijaya had been in charge of legal and policy for a decade at a company that regularly has to tangle with nation state governments, as well as navigate all the other kinds of various policy hell that is Twitter…

You're forgetting he has access to teams of competent lawyers (and their networks) who will already have to interact with international law for Tesla et al.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#947

Post by jensgk »

origin_path wrote: post #915
EMM_386 wrote: post #864

I am not sure what Elon's vision of a "free speech" platform is, but if you allow absolutely all legal free speech, with limited/no moderation, it will turn into a cesspool. This "Welcome to Hell, Elon" article sums up most of my points so I won't bother to repeat them all here. https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitt...

That's the left wing perspective, not some universal truth. Obvious counterexamples: America, the internet, e2e encrypted messaging.

America???

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#948

Post by aeyes »

concinds wrote: post #307
julianeon wrote: post #57

In the spirit of trying to be high-information and add value: Where Musk is going, there are no maps. So it's very very hard to project. But we can predict likely developments. At a very high level, it's going to involve: bringing back controversial personalities like Donald Trump; increasing Twitter's commitment to 'free speech'; assuaging skittish advertisers; retaining users who might be concerned, while bringing…

Most people are focused on censorship/content issues, but I really think the X.com "mega app" vision is the most significant part of this. It'll be hard to gain a foothold in those markets, and there'll be antitrust challenges, but it really fits perfectly with the rest of Musk's vision: X.com Maps could tie in with Teslas, X.com Carhailing could tie-in with (future) full self-driving; Twitter could be expanded to be…

He could just buy Uber for another 50 billion and he'd be more than halfway there...

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#949

Post by ziml77 »

randomsearch wrote: post #573
mullingitover wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> managing the exodus of users (size:?) that will happen regardless; This is probably the biggest risk in this acquisition. Twitter wasn't doing anything special, and it's easy to launch a clone of their business model. Elon's talking about taking an axe to the things that keep the lights on at Twitter: effective content moderation and talent.

If you think Twitter can be easily cloned then you know everything about tech and nothing about business.

Pretty sure that's 85% of the people who comment on this site. Only thinking about the purely technical side of things, never the issues and limitations that come from other people.

Re: Elon Musk owns Twitter: The story so far

#950

Post by Veedrac »

gamegoblin wrote: post #865
georgeg23 wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had help from the government, specifically Mike Griffin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career The rocket landing stuff largely borrow from DC-X and the spinoff work at NASA (+Lars Blackmore), all originally Strategic Defense Initiative stuff. He used all that money from Mike as collateral for loans to Tesla. He deserves some credit for impressive financial engineering and attracting talent under…

If it were just a matter of money, any of the other billionaires who tried to build rocket companies would have succeeded. SpaceX got payload to orbit with ~$100M. The only other company that has come close to this is Rocket Lab with a bit over $200M invested. By comparison, Bezos has been sinking > $1B per year into Blue Origin for nearly a decade without making it to orbit, and probably won't until 2024 at the earl…

> Bezos has been sinking > $1B per year into Blue Origin for nearly a decade

Not to claim a false SpaceX-Blue equivalence here, but this is misleading. Most of the early work at Blue Origin was on a fairly tight budget, and SpaceX has always had significantly more development money than Blue.

It is true that Blue has taken much longer to get to orbit, but they're starting with effectively a Saturn V class vehicle (a bit smaller, but partially reusable), whereas SpaceX started their orbital ambitions with the vastly smaller Falcon 1.

The gap in technical competence and effectiveness is still huge, but it's not as stark as the money-to-orbit metric would have it seem. New Sheppard could have reached orbit long ago, if it was designed to be orbital; it's just there's no money (in a Bezos sense) in small launch, and that wasn't the tech it was designed to prove out, so it wasn't.

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